Festival of Film

Also published on my Festival of Britain 1951 blogspot (see link at foot of post)

Before the opening credits of ‘The Magic Box’ (1951), the Festival of Britain logo flashes onto the screen. The film was shown at the Festival, before it went on general release. We can therefore assume that it was meant to fit in with the ethos of the Festival – a celebration of British achievement. It certainly showcases the best of contemporary acting talent, with a long list of stars performing in tiny cameo roles. Some parts are so tiny, it is literally a case of blink and you will miss them.  I certainly missed seeing Googie Withers, Sheila Sim and Marius Goring. Others have slightly more prominent five-minute pieces, giving us a taste of the kind of role that they were famous for. Margaret Rutherford as a bossy yet coquettish dame, Laurence Olivier as an incredulous policeman, Joyce Grenfell as a fussy spinster and Eric Portman as an angry businessman.  I could go on. It is a veritable pageant of drama skills. 

The talent is a literal celebration of British film-making. But the storyline also looks at the life of film pioneer William Friese-Greene (played by Robert Donat).  Fitting in with the Festival’s celebration of British science, it seems to say – ‘Look! It was us that invented film! But we are so modest with our achievements while other nationalities blow their own trumpets so loudly that they drown us out!’

Visit Sarah's Amazon page...click the link below

Having watched the film myself, I wasn’t impressed with the character of Friese-Greene. He is portrayed as a very selfish man, who puts his inventing before his wives and his children. His first wife dies of ill health – the film suggests that this was exacerbated by the debts that her husband ran up by eschewing proper work. He marries again and his six sons are all shown as suffering from his single minded attitude. In the end, three of them join World War One as under age soldiers in order to stop becoming a financial burden on their parents. This second marriage ends when his wife can take no more.  He apparently destroyed the opportunity to become a rich society photographer because of his obsession with developing a moving picture.  I was flabbergasted at this – surely he could have invented at evenings and weekends?  This is how the rest of us have to follow our dreams!

I wonder if the 1951 audience took a different  attitude?  Were they meant to view him with sympathy as a man who gave up everything and got no recognition for his ground breaking work?  This would sit more comfortably with the Festival ethos. Does ‘The Magic Box’ depict a long gone set of values, when it was understandable to put genius before family? When a man could get away more easily with neglecting his sons? A fascinating question of 1950s morals and mores. 

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sarah-Miller-Walters/e/B00DZPX09U

http://festivalofbritain1951.blogspot.co.uk/

Make Do and Die

Being something of a sewing fan, the wartime catchphrase “make do and mend” makes me immediately think of clothing.  This is what the phrase was often referring to in its everyday use.  Make do with your old clothes, patch them up, transform your curtains into a frock etc.  But then a film that I watched recently broadened my make-do-mend horizons.    The film was called ‘Bang! You’re Dead.’ It was made in 1954 and stars Jack Warner.  Warner plays a woodsman who lives with his seven year old son.  As he works in the woods, his son is left free to roam.  Inevitably, the boy is drawn to an abandoned U.S. military base, where he plays in the huts and on the old jeeps scattered around the yard. One day, while rummaging around his playground, the boy finds a revolver. He uses it to play highwaymen with a man on a bicycle, and unwittingly shoots the cyclist dead.  An innocent man is then accused of murder and the rest of the film is taken up with the investigations.

My “make do and mend” moment concerned the housing depicted in the film. Warner and his son live in a Nissen hut, a large semi-circular, corrugated iron construction. They form a row of such dwellings; the inhabitants having done their best to transform them into cosy cottages.  They keep hens in their gardens, grow their own vegetables and hang out their washing to dry among the bushes and trees.  At a glance, filmed in the summertime, it all looks quite idyllic.  Surely this wouldn’t have been so cosy in the wintertime when the wind howled across bare gardens and through the gaps in the corrugated sheets.  Not really somewhere that you’d want to live all year round.  Possibly these huts depicted in the film were meant to have been connected with the U.S. base.  There were many of these Nissen huts sprouting up throughout World War Two – they were cheap preformed structures that were quick to get into place. They were used in many wartime developments such as military bases and prisoner of war camps. When their original use was no longer necessary, then the “make do and mend” mentality meant that they were often put to varied peacetime uses, from homes to playgrounds to pigsties.

Jack Warner by @aitchteee

Coincidentally, another use for Nissen huts was brought to my attention just a day or two after watching the film.  I work for a charity that supports people who have become ill as a result of asbestos exposure.  I was given a case study of a teacher who had developed Mesothelioma as a result of working in Nissen huts that had been converted into school classrooms.  The insides of the huts had been coated in an asbestos impregnated material.  The pinning and stapling of work to walls had released the deadly fibres into his lungs. Unbeknownst to Jack Warner, those huts on the abandoned base held something more deadly that the abandoned revolver with a single bullet left in it.  This is, of course, aside from other diseases linked to living in damp and unsanitary conditions.  One suspects that the wife and mother of the woodsman and his boy succumbed to pneumonia or something similar.

So it transpires that there were two kinds of “make do and mend”.  A good sort, where materials were looked after, reused and resources preserved.  One that some are now trying to return to in response to our throwaway culture.  But there was a side that we would not want to return to, one which forced people into makeshift homes and workplaces.  We are still feeling the consequences of this.

Follow the History Usherette on Twitter: @Agathadascoyne @SewsAttic @VintageMapLady

Find out more about Asbestos in Schools: @DAST24


Reviews for The History Usherette's Second Seat, Third Row on Amazon:

Click here to buy in Paperback or Kindle